Yesterday I was sitting at home, listening to my wife, Sheila, who is a clinical psychologist working on her doctoral dissertation. She was talking about various things and mentioned 'Rejection Sensitivity'. I immediately started to pay a little more attention and thought that it had a lot of relevance for corporate interactions as well.
How do we act when we sense we are rejected – rejected by a group of people, rejected at the office? It may or may not be true. It could be that we are just hypersensitive to the people around us. And that's what rejection sensitivity is – to be overly sensitive to rejection. The whole idea is that it's something that is not really happening, but it's a perception that we have because of various ways in which we have been exposed to things during our childhood, our upbringing and so on. It has to do with nurture more than anything else. Rejection sensitivity could play a part in the way we interact with people in our office spaces as well.
I decided to pursue that line of thinking and share some thoughts that might or might not be helpful to you, as the case may be. Let's take an example. You send out a text. Texts are immediate; you can see that the person has received it. But you don't get a response back immediately. Your immediate reaction is to think that the person doesn't care about you; they think they are better than you and so they are making you wait – things that are not really true but you begin to believe it.
Or you write to somebody and they don't reply immediately. Time goes on and you think, "I've sent an email. It's important! Don't they realize that I am waiting for their response?" It has to do with how one perceives one's own importance, how on perceives one's own social sensitivity and rejection. All those issues begin to play in.
Office dynamics tend to contribute to that. It can be that in the course of the day, we can come across people who are perceived to be like that and yet are not, because that's what rejection sensitivity is. It's a perception on our part that is not real. Yet, we perceive it to be real and so act on it. What happens then is that it makes you imagine all kinds of scenarios, especially in people with a creative bent. You can begin to create such scenarios that have absolutely no relevance to the situation. But as you create them in your mind, you begin to believe it. And as you believe it, then you go further down the tubes – and it's a very slippery slope. It has to do with being sensitive to people. What happens when you are extra-sensitive is that it makes you very suspicious of people.
I remember my pastor Dr. Sam Kamalesan recounting a story that he had heard about Michael and Ruby. He talks about this day when Michael was walking along. He had just come back from a game of marbles. He sees Ruby coming down the street towards him. She is unwrapping a chocolate and eating it. The one thing that Michael liked over almost everything was chocolate. So he stopped Ruby and said, "Can I have some chocolate?" She looks at him and said, "What will you give me in exchange?" By this point, Michael is salivating at the thought of having chocolate. So he puts his hand in his pocket and sees all his marbles and says, "I'll give you all my marbles." Ruby knew how precious his marbles were to him. So she agreed. So Michael carefully put his hand in his pocket and fingers around for that one marble that is his favorite, pushes it to the absolute corner and pulls everything out and gives her all the marbles. She puts her hand in her pocket and gives him all her chocolates. She walks away whistling, happy that she had got all his marbles. Michael walks a few yards and suddenly he stops; he fingers that one marble in his pocket and then shouts out after Ruby, "Hey Ruby! Did you give me all of your chocolates?" Something that he did, he now thought that the other person was also doing to him.
That's the problem with being overtly sensitive. It makes us very suspicious of the other person. Along with suspicion, lack of trust happens and we begin to think that they are doing the same thing or they feel the same way that you are feeling.
So how would you respond to rejection sensitivity? Is there a way that you can change it? Yes there is!
1. Recognize that you do have this issue of rejection sensitivity. Awareness first. Only then can it lead to change. Only if you are aware of some problem can you begin to bring about a change in the problem.
2. Challenge the irrational belief. Challenge it. See if there are other possible explanations for what has happened. Somebody didn't send you a text, somebody didn't reply. Look for other explanations. If you can believe those explanations, then it could be that your initial interpretation of the situation may not be accurate at all.
3. Expose or practice rejection. For example: I remember years back, a marketing man telling me that it takes seven rejections on a sales pitch to get a sale. So he said, "What I do is – I get the seven out of the way. Then I know that I'm going to get the eighth." In other words, whatever you feel rejected about, pursue them and say, "I'm just going to do more of this and get it out of the way so that I can then begin to think positively."
Having said that, I also want to say this. Beyond all that, we ought to realize how we are made. Our Holy Scriptures tells us that we are made in the very image of God. Imagio Deo. And we cannot look lightly on ourselves if we are made like that. And sometimes we need to remind ourselves, "I am made in the image of God and therefore I am worth something.
Also, remember that God is able to restore to us even the years that have been taken away from us. That's what He says in His Holy Scriptures. Maybe through this rejection sensitivity, you've lost a lot. It's made you a different person. Maybe the thing to do is to go back to Him and say, "Will You help me? Restore to me the years that I have lost."
This is something that I have just been sensing over the last couple of days out of Psalm 18 in our Scriptures where it says that God delights in us. He helps us because He delights in us.
I wonder whether those are three things that would encourage your spirits this morning: to know that we are made in the image of God, to know that He can restore to us the years that have been taken away from us, and that He delights in us. It did uplift me this morning and my prayer is that they would do the same for you.
May I pray with you? Almighty God. Remind us, each one of us on this call, how special we are. If by some chance there are some who are overtly sensitive, who have allowed that to harm them in some way or the other, remind us too that You are a God who can restore and redeem. And Lord, as we go through our day, help us to draw great sweetness of moments from this fact that You delight over us; that You, Almighty God, Heavenly Father, Eternal God, delight in each one of us. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.
• Karen Hall, "Rejection Sensitivity." http://blogs.psychcentral.com/emotionally-sensitive/2013/05/rejection-sensitivity/
• Monica A. Frank, "Rejection, Irrational Jealousy, and Impact on Relationships," https://www.excelatlife.com/articles/fear_of_rejection.htm
• Scripture references:
Genesis 1:27
Joel 2:25
Psalm 18:19
No comments:
Post a Comment